This Week and Last Week: The Martyrdom of a Prophet and Succession in the Presidency

The headstones of Joseph Smith, Jr., Emma Hale Smith and Hyrum Smith [Nauvoo, IL]

My apologies to all who searched in vain for a blog posting last week. I have been wrapped in personal trials and unable to share with the "masses." It was only fitting that as I studied the meaning of the constant turbulence in Joseph's short 38-year life, that I would for a moment have to swim some "deep waters" of my own. But after so many lessons on overcoming adversity, this week's transition felt like saying goodbye to a close friend. We now say so long to the Prophet Joseph -- that well spring of Celestial insight and fount of near constant revelation during his lifetime, and hello to his successor -- the man Leonard Arrington referred to as the "American Moses" -- Brigham Young.

I marvel at the simplicity with which we recently transitioned from the leadership of President Gordon B. Hinckley to his successor, President Thomas S. Monson. We can thank the Lord in our next prayers for the near perfect harmony we experience today as the mantle of leadership is passed from one leader to the next and there is no doubt about who holds the keys to the Kingdom of God on the earth today.

The Savior warned against false prophets in the latter days: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing..." but then taught: "Ye shall know them by their fruits" [Matthew 7:15-16].

BY THEIR FRUITS...
In 1844 the transition was not so seamless. In the fall and winter of 1843, Joseph chided the Twelve, "We are under condemnation for we have often met and not taken adequate minutes -- and thus precious truths have been lost." Joseph also prophesied "if we fail to keep adequate records going forward we will fall into the hands of our enemies." As one small example, we have only Wilford Woodfruff's after the fact notes of Joseph's final meeting with the Twelve. Truman G. Madsen taught that if several members of the Twelve had at that time taken notes of this meeting, as the Prophet had counselled and warned them to do, "any claim that he had intended any other form of succession would be by contemporary documents completely refuted." In the wake of the Prophet Joseph's martyrdom there arose at least FIVE challenges to Brigham Young's leadership of the Church. These were:

1. James J. Strang. Only a member four months at the time of the Martyrdom, James Strang produced a "Letter of Appointment" only a few weeks later that he claimed was written by Joseph Smith naming him president of the Church. Strang's charisma was obvious immediately as he convinced several eminent Saints of his claims. Book of Mormon witnesses John and David Whitmer, Martin Harris and Hiram Page, Apostles John E. Page, William E. McLellin, and William Smith, Smith's sisters, Nauvoo Stake President William Marks, Bishop George Miller, and Joseph Smith's mother, Lucy Mack Smith, as well as prominent apostate John C. Bennett, accepted Strang at first. Strang eventually revealed parts of the Brass Plates of Laban (mentioned in the Book of Mormon), moved his followers to Beaver Island, Michigan, and had himself crowned king of the colony in accordance with teachings from his translation of the Brass Plates. Strang was assassinated by disaffected members on July 9, 1856. Afterward, all of the Strangites were forcibly evicted from Beaver Island and the remaining active membership relocated to Voree, Wisconsin. Strang did not name a successor, and his church has remained leaderless to this day.


2. Sidney Rigdon. Sidney Rigdon, First Counselor in the First Presidency, arrived from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 3 August 1844. In the year before this time, he had become estranged from the Prophet and had all but ceased communication with the main leadership of the Church including Joseph. He refused to meet with the three members of the Twelve already in Nauvoo and instead spoke to a large group of the Saints assembled for their Sunday worship service. He told them of a vision he had received in which he had learned that no one could replace Joseph Smith. He said that a guardian to the Church should be appointed and that guardian should be Sidney Rigdon. Few Saints supported him. The few Latter Day Saints who followed Rigdon separated themselves and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On April 6, 1845, Rigdon presided over a conference of the Church of Christ, which he claimed was the rightful continuation of the church founded by Joseph Smith. He then reorganized the First Presidency and called his own Quorum of Twelve Apostles. Although Rigdon's church briefly flourished through the publication of his periodical, "The Messenger and Advocate," quarrels among the Rigdonites led most members of the church to desert the senior leader by 1847. Rigdon lived on for many years afterward in Pennsylvania and New York. He maintained his testimony of the Book of Mormon and clung to his claims that he was the rightful heir to Joseph Smith. He died in Friendship, New York with no real following to speak of and no successor.


3. Lyman Wight. After the Martyrdom, Lyman Wight led a group of Saints to the Republic of Texas where they constructed a temple (in Zodiac, Texas). Wight at first maintained a positive correspondence with Brigham Young, but when it became obvious he had no intention of following the main body of the Saints out to Utah he was excommunicated (in 1848). Wight later recognized William Smith as the President of the Church (called the "Williamites" by Utah LDS members) for a short time and served as a counselor in William's short-lived First Presidency. After 1849, Wight wrote and stated that he believed the prophetic mantle of church leadership should fall on the shoulders of Joseph Smith's sons. By then he had no use for Brigham Young, William Smith, and James Strang as pretenders, in his mind, as successors to Joseph Smith. He died with a small remnant of his colony on March 31, 1858, a few miles from San Antonio. The only trace of his "Mormon" colony today is a small cemetery in Burnet County, Texas.


4. William Smith. Younger brother of the Prophet Joseph Smith and one of the original Twelve Apostles ordained in 1835, William became convinced shortly after the Martyrdom that his brother Samuel had been poisoned by followers of Brigham Young. Samuel fell ill shortly after his all-night ride to retrieve the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum, and died just one month later Not surprisingly, William (who had publicly defamed Brigham Young in the press) was excommunicated in 1845. Thereafter, he became a member of the Strangite sect, moving with it to Michigan until his falling out with James Strang. In 1847, he announced that he was the president of his own LDS Church and that he held a right to leadership due to the doctrine of lineal succession. He excommunicated Young and the leadership of the LDS Church and announced that the Saints who were not in apostasy by following Brigham Young should gather to Lee County, Illinois. In 1849, Smith gained the support of Lyman Wight, who led a small group of Saints in Texas. However, Smith's church did not last, and within a few years it dissolved. After serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, he became a member of the RLDS Church, which had been organized several years earlier with Smith's nephew, Joseph Smith III, as its leader. The majority of William's ex-followers by this time had also joined the RLDS Church. While Smith believed that he was entitled to become the presiding patriarch or a member of the Council of Twelve Apostles of the RLDS Church, his nephew did not agree and William Smith remained merely a member of the RLDS Church for the remainder of his life.


5. Joseph Smith III. Only 11 years old at the time of his father's death, he was never considered an immediate successor to his father in 1844. However, because of the witnessed and documented accounts that he had been blessed by his father to succeed him in the role of prophet of the Church, many members who did not move West with the Saints in 1847 and had stayed in the Midwest looked to the boy to one day become its leader. In 1860, and only a few years following the deaths of both James Strang and Lyman Wight, Joseph Smith III founded a new Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (later named "Reorganized" to distinguish it from the LDS Church in Utah). Unlike other members of the Smith family who had at times favored the claims of James J. Strang and/or William Smith, Emma Smith and her children continued to live as unaffiliated to any religious sect. Knowing the dangers and hardships firsthand, Emma may have preferred a different path for her son. However, when Joseph III reported receiving a calling from God to take his father's place as head of a "New Organization" of the Latter Day Saint church, she supported his decision. The church operated on the principle of lineal succession (meaning that the leader had to be a male descendant of Joseph Smith, Jr.) and had a strong following for a time until Wallace B. Smith (Joseph Smith III's last surviving male heir stepped down as leader of the church in 1996. With no male Smith's alive to lead the church a grandson, Frederick Larsen, assumed leadership in 2001, but the church was forced by financial constraints to denounce the Book of Mormon as valid scripture and take on the name of Community of Christ.

The most common "fruit" linking each of the above religious movements is their absolute "disappearance" over the passing of time and through the course of history. BTW of all of the above offshoots of Mormonism, only the Community of Christ and the Strangites (see http://www.strangite.org/Welcome.htm) have any active organization operating today. Given the fact that the Community of Christ Church does not recognize either Joseph Smith to have been a Prophet of God nor the Book of Mormon to be scripture, one can safely say that its fruits are "disappearance" in the same way that the others are. I think the obscurity of the Strangite sect also speaks for itself.

I will not take the time to list the "fruits" of the Brigham Young-led Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, except to re-list the items that were restored by our Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. that we wrote down on the chalkboard last Sunday:

• Truths about the Godhead


• The authority of the priesthood


• Truths about our origin and relationship to God


• Scriptures


• Truths about the plan of salvation


• Truths about the salvation of the dead


• The building of temples and the performance of temple ordinances


• The Word of Wisdom


• The Articles of Faith

It seems to me that most telling sign of God's aprobation upon the Church and its modern-day prophets, from Brigham Young on down to Thomas S. Monson is that He continues to prosper his Church in all things (both temporally and spiritually) in fulfilment of prophecy (Daniel 2: 34-35, 44-45). In our Church today, each of the above truths restored by Joseph Smith are alive and well -- practiced by its membership and as vibrant and relevant to modern religious practice as ever!

This Sunday we will discuss Doctrine and Covenants 107: 22-24, and how this doctrine, revealed to Joseph Smith in 1835, continues to be practiced today by the Church leadership.